gvim color scheme - How to set the default gvim colorscheme

By Alvin Alexander. Last updated: September 27 2016

I just finished downloading and installing vim (gvim) on my Mac (Mac OS X 10.5.x to be precise), and then struggling for a while to set the default colorscheme, I thought I’d make a brief note here about how to set the default colorscheme properly.

Setting a default gvim color scheme (colorscheme)

As a friend of mine once, said “It’s easy to do, once you know how to do it.” For me, that applies to setting a default colorscheme for gvim on Mac OS X.

To set your vim default colorscheme to a theme named “slate,” just follow these steps:

2) Second, add the following lines to that file. If the file already exists, just put these lines at the end of the file, otherwise just insert them.

" color scheme of the moment:
syntax on
colorscheme slate

3) Third, save your changes, then restart vim/gvim. The “slate” colorscheme should now be your default color scheme. If you want a different scheme to be your default — say the “desert” scheme — just change that last line to this:

colorscheme desert

In summary, if you want to see how to set the default gvim color scheme, I hope this is helpful.